Tuesday, 25 October 2016

The end of 30 years' Anti-Nuclear policy and a weapons conference in Wellington, NZ

Next
month, from 14-20 November the USS
Sampson will
attend the Royal New Zealand Navy’s International Naval Review,
which just happens to coincide with a Weapons Conference & Expo
sponsored by the NZ Defence Industry Association (NZDIA), 16-20
November. The NZ Government’s decision to spend $20 billion
upgrading weapons over the next 15 years is welcomed by both the
global arms industry and the countries with which New Zealand aligns
itself militarily. On its website, the NZDIA
says of itself:

“Formed
in 1993 on the back of the ANZAC Frigate Project, the NZ DIA [sic] is
New Zealand industry’s principle [sic] conduit to the New Zealand
Defence Force (NZDF). The primary focus of NZ DIA [sic] remains
enabling Members to be informed about, understand and support the
Crown’s Defence procurement programme. NZ DIA [sic] works to
deliver mutually beneficial process improvement, lower business cost
and improved commercial outcomes for Defence, associated agencies
(e.g. security, intelligence, border control, police, customs) and
NZDIA members by achieving recognition as the Defence Industry
Stakeholder Representative of Choice for reference, consultation and
engagement across industry, sector and procurement initiatives.”

“Our
Forum continues to be the critical event that brings Defence and
Crown officials together with Industry to build relationships and
understand how best to leverage the genuine interdependence that
exists for the benefit of all stakeholders. With the launch of the NZ
Government’s Defence White Paper, Australia’s Defence Industry
Policy and the NZDF’s Industry Engagement Strategy, along with
significant capital acquisition plans, there will be plenty for
delegates to network over. Our Forum continues to be the critical
event that brings Defence and Crown officials together with Industry
to build relationships and understand how best to leverage the
genuine interdependence that exists for the benefit of all
stakeholders. Finally, I would like to thank the Secretary of Defence
and the Chief of Defence Force for their joint support for the 2016
Defence Industry Forum.”

War,
defence, politics and profit

Notice
the emphasis that all is for the benefit of ‘stakeholders’. The
global arms industry acts in the best interests of shareholders and
uses its enormous bargaining power to lobby politicians. In turn, the
armed services of nation states act at the behest of politicians. The
arms industry profits, without distinction, from every participant on
all sides of armed conflicts, which makes the endless process of
destabilisation good for investors. While the word ‘defence’
predominates when arms are marketed and wars are either under way or
being planned, it is the defenceless victims who always pay the
grimmest price. What follows is a glimpse of what this has meant to
humanity since the end of the Second World War (when war ministries
were renamed ‘defence’ ministries!)

The
Israeli military Occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights (along with
the merciless violence being visited upon the rest of Syria) is part
of a long history of foreign interference and advantage-taking in the
Middle East. At the end of World War One, Britain and France
disrupted the lives of people living in what had been relatively
quiet regions of the Ottoman Empire and imposed their own destructive
brand of imperialism. The two European nations turned the region into
one of the least stable and most explosive in the world, thus laying
the foundations for the present mayhem.

In
World War Two, Syria came under the control of Nazi-aligned Vichy
France until the Allies and the Free French Forces drove
out the German forces and took their place in July 1941.
Syria proclaimed independence but was forced to wait until 1 January
1944 for recognition as an independent republic. France, however, was
reluctant to relinquish control and, in 1945, French artillery opened
fire on Syrians protesting against the slow pace of withdrawal.
Eventually, in May 1945, French troops occupied the Syrian Parliament
and cut off the electricity supply to Damascus. French artillery then
bombarded the Old City of Damascus, killing
400 Syrians and destroying hundreds of homes. Finally, in April
1946, the Syrian Resistance did eventually force the French to leave
Syria.

Israel’s
invasion of Syria and the price paid by the crew of the USS
LibertyDuring
the so-called ‘Six-Day War’ in 1967, Israeli forces deliberately
attacked, in international
waters, a vessel they knew to be the
American intelligence-gathering ship USS
Liberty.
Israel had been about to invade the Golan Heights but postponed the
manoeuvre for 24 hours until
it had disabled the US Navy vessel. The attack by Israeli Air
Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats
killed 34 crew members, wounded 171 and severely damaged the ship.
The US Government went to extreme lengths to cover up the true
enormity of the attack and the
crew felt betrayed. An on
line video is available that includes the real-time
conversations between Israeli Air Force pilots and their controllers.

Continuing
the Western tradition

On
19 February 2014, the Jerusalem Post reported a visit by Netanyahu to
an Israeli field hospital that had been established for militants
wounded in combat against Syrian forces. The visit was a publicity
exercise to put a favourable face on news that was emerging of
Israel’s direct military aid to fighters under the banners of
Jabhat al-Nusrah, Liwa-al-Islam and other Al-Qaeda brigades. An
Austrian United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) officer
had warned
in June 2013that Israel was maintaining a joint intelligence and
operations room with “Syrian
rebels”.
The UN Security Council, however, chose to ignore this as well as
similar warnings.

Plan
to exploit and profit

In
2015, a New
York Times article revealed
something of Israel’s plan to exploit and profit from the desired,
foreign-inspired breaking up of Syria. “Israel looks to expand
settlements in Golan Heights”, wrote Jodi Rudoren, with an
“aggressive development goal — 100,000 new residents across the
Golan in five years — being promoted by Naftali Bennett, a senior
Israeli minister and one of many Israeli leaders and thinkers seizing
on the chaos in Syria to solidify Israel’s hold on the Golan.”
Israel and the US hope that, with “Syria disintegrating after years
of civil war”, American recognition of Israel’s 1981 annexation
of the Golan would be gradually accepted by the international
community. Naftali Bennett revealed Israel’s aggressive
expansionist ambition, saying: “Given the storm we’re in that can
go on for the next five or 50 years, nobody knows, we need some
constants, and one big constant is for the big mountain of the Golan
to be Israeli.” It seems evident that Israel would be in no hurry
to see peace restored in Syria.

“An
act of Zionism”

The NY
Times article
tells us that Israeli settlers moved to the Merom Golan kibbutz in
Syria “as
an act of Zionism”.
It also celebrated the fact that Israel had plundered “the
400-plus square miles” and
deprived the Syrian people of “lush
agricultural terrain yielding prize apples, cherries and beef.”Not
to forget either that the stolen land affords “a vast playground
that drew 3 million tourist visits last year.” While the United
Nations Security Council has condemned Israel’s annexation of the
Golan Heights, with most of the world considering the territory to be
under foreign military Occupation and the settlements there illegal,
Jodi Rudoren celebrated the fact that “it is rarely the focus of
international activism or diplomacy; the construction in Merom Golan
drew no public criticism . . .” She also gloated over the thought
that the defeated “Druse residents who have for decades dreamed
that the land would be returned to Syria have begun to acknowledge a
new reality.”

Early
last month, Christof Lehmann of nsnbc international reported that the
Israeli Occupation had started demolishing
Syrian homes, just as it does to homes in East Jerusalem and the
West Bank. Israel is bound by international law, as an Occupying
power, to assure that its administration adheres as close as possible
to Syrian law. Instead, the Zionist state has imposed modern Hebrew
as the official administrative language and imposed severe
restrictions on Syrians in order to advantage Israeli settlers.
Israeli restrictions render it impossible for the Syrian population
to obtain building permits. Syrians in the Golan Heights are forced
to pay taxes to the Israeli regime but, because Israel does not
regard them as citizens, they receive next to nothing in return. They
run their own hospitals and build their own schools. In May 2014,
Israel even denied Syrians in the Golan Heights the right to vote in
Syrian elections. In spite of appeals, the
United Nations failed to respond.

Because
Israel will not allow for natural population growth, the people are
forced to build without permission. Syrians in the Occupied Golan
Heights face severely restricted access to their land and water, on
top of land confiscation. The effect on farming is devastating.
According to the NGO, Jawlan-Golan for the Development of the Arab
Villages, the area’s Israeli settlers use as much as“17
times more water per capita“ than
the indigenous inhabitants. As in Occupied Palestine, forced
expulsions and settler expansion have also split Golan Heights
families. In 1967, “130,000
Syrian inhabitants were expelled from the Golan Heights”,
leaving only 6000 residents behind. As a result,“Syrian
families are now split” between
the Occupied Syrian Golan Heights and Syrian territory beyond. Some
residents of the Golan Heights have, naturally, “resisted“ Occupation
by the Israeli regime and many have been incarcerated by Israel as
political prisoners. A UN
Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD)
report takes Zionist Israel to task for racial discrimination, both
at home and in Occupied territories, including the Syrian Golan
Heights.

The
Syrian Golan Heights are NOT in Israel

The
reason why Zionist expansionism is “rarely
the focus of international activism or diplomacy” is
because Israel has powerful allies and plenty of not-so-powerful
hangers-on. New Zealand’s squandered presence at the Security
Council is a good example of the latter. Earlier this year, a New
Zealand Government Press Statement implied that the Golan Heights are
in Israel. The statement read: “Defence
Minister Gerry Brownlee will today arrive in Stuttgart, Germany,
following his first visit to NZ Defence Force (NZDF) troops at South
Camp in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights in
Israel.” Following
a Palestine Human Rights Campaign Press
Release drawing attention to the fact that the Golan Heights
are not in Israel, the
statement was changed to read: “Defence
Minister Gerry Brownlee will today arrive in Stuttgart, Germany,
following his first visit to NZ Defence Force (NZDF) troops at South
Camp in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Israel, and the Golan
Heights.” How
is it that the New Zealand Government could ever have used such
careless language? According to a BBC
article, the Israeli-Occupied Syrian territory provides a third
of Israel’s water supply, enabling the Zionist state to use the
fertile, volcanic soil to “cultivate vineyards and orchards and to
raise cattle”. Tourism is a thriving Israeli enterprise in the
Syrian territory, which is now home to Israel’s only ski resort.
But there is more than territorial ambition driving Israel’s
criminal annexation of the Golan Heights — a WikiLeaks
release shows that it has been US policy to violently
overthrow the Syrian Government.

In
another recent example of misleading use of language, a news
item in the NZ
Herald published
on 14 September, reporting on a missile that landed in the Golan
Heights, commented: “The
incident was the fifth case since last week in which fighting in
Syria has spilled over into Israel.”Israeli
Prime Minister Netanyahu stated
at a Cabinet meeting in April that “after
50 years, the time has come for the international community to
finally recognise that the Golan Heights will remain under Israel’s
sovereignty permanently.” It
looks as though the Herald got the message.

The
Israeli Tourism website, GoIsrael, claims the Golan Heights are in
IsraelThe website
boasts:“The
Golan Heights, Israel’s mountainous northern region, is one of the
most beautiful and most travelled parts of the country. There are
wonderful scenic treasures alongside lovely nature reserves, historic
and archeological sites and attractions for the whole family. Some
people call this area the Israeli Texas, because of its size, while
others see it as a land of plentiful water sources.” The
Zionist propaganda site goes on to say: “The
Golan Heights is the only part of Israel with basalt stones,
originating from long ago volcanic eruptions.”

Hiding
war crimes

On
20 September, an article
in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz released
news of recently-leaked cables issued by Israeli Foreign Ministry
officials in 1967 and 1968 that admitted to Israeli violations of the
Geneva Conventions in East Jerusalem and the West Bank (referred to
by Israel as “administered territories”) and put forward
recommendations to help keep them from public knowledge. One cable,
sent in March 1968 to Israel’s ambassador in Washington at the
time, Yitzhak Rabin, read:

“Our
consistent policy has been and still is to avoid discussing the
situation in the administered territories with foreign parties on the
basis of the Geneva Conventions. … Explicit recognition on our part
of the applicability of the Geneva Conventions would highlight
serious problems under the convention with house demolitions,
expulsions, settlement and more — and furthermore, when we’re
obligated to leave all options open with regard to the issue of
borders, we must not recognise that our status in the administered
territories is solely that of an occupying power.”

1.
“New Zealand’s approach to security, and particularly maritime
security, is anchored in strong support for international laws of the
sea.”

2.
“A rules based system is particularly important for ensuring
continued freedom of navigation and collective maritime security.”

It
is time our Government lived up to its claims. The attack on USS
Liberty illustrates
most clearly that Israel has never respected international law, yet
the New Zealand Government recently chose to support Israel over the
armed hijacking, in international waters, of the peaceful Women’s
Boat to Gaza. In doing so, the New Zealand Government betrayed the
rights of New Zealand citizens and helped to undermine the principles
of international maritime law.

There
is still time for our voice to be heard at the Security Council in
defence of all the victims of Israel’s territorial ambitions. But
with the discovery
of substantial oil deposits in the Golan Heights in 2015,
there is cause for concern that the West will incline more towards
support for Israeli annexation of territory possessed of
such substantial
hydrocarbon resources. In 2013, Israel
granted Genie Energy (shareholders include Jacob Rothschild
and Rupert Murdoch) exclusive oil and gas exploration rights to a
153-square-mile radius in the southern part of the Golan Heights.

The
Palestinian people also, desperately in need of security, look to us
and the rest of the world to bring Israel to account. The UN Security
Council has stood passively by and allowed the Gaza Strip to be
turned into the largest concentration camp in history. Similarly,
Israel rules the West Bank and East Jerusalem with implacable
brutality – and impunity – while world leaders tell the
Palestinians that they are on their own and must negotiate directly
with the Zionist regime, as if they were equal parties! Will the
Security Council ever be brought to recognise that the Palestinian
people, like the rest of humanity, also have a right to security?

There
is a moral choice; it could be an electrifying game-changer if New
Zealand were to step up and demand that all UN member states show
paramount respect for the Fourth Geneva Convention. Without justice,
all the rhetoric concerning ‘defence’ is merely self-serving
marketing. Without justice there can only be lawlessness; and as we
have seen, failure to stand for justice serves only the greed of
those who profit from Middle East instability.